Speaking In Tongues
Guided by Voices
BAUHAUS
by Anna Glazova
Introduction
The influence of the Bauhaus on processes in architecture, interior
design, furniture manufacturing and visual arts after its tragic closure
in 1933 by the Nazi government in the remaining part of the 20th
century cannot be underestimated. The entire furniture design is based
on the innovations, implemented by the Bauhäusler, and we are used to the
expression «the Bauhaus style.» The Bauhaus claimed to be international,
and its ideas successfully traversed borders into different countries.
My first encounter with the Bauhaus happened in the Moscow Architectural
Institute, where in the early 90's the Bauhaus was still a major source
of ideas for the whole educational and professional concept, and as far
as I know the Illinois Institute of Technology (considered a contemporary
successor to the Bauhaus in the USA) has an introductory course for the
first-year students, structured similarly to the Bauhaus Vorkurs.
What made the Bauhaus special and, at the same time, versatile to that
extent? First of all, let us examine the roots.
How the Bauhaus Began
Frank Whitford wrote: «The school's first aim was to rescue all the
arts from the isolation in which each then (allegedly) found itself and
to train the craftsmen, painters and sculptors of the future to embark
on cooperative projects in which all their skills would be combined.» (1,
p. 11) What is remarkable in this quote is the word allegedly --
Whitford claims, that Gropius' idea of the art and craft's amalgamation
was not very new. As examples of the Bauhaus forerunners he mentions the
Wiener Werkstätte and, most importantly, the British reformers of education.
Influenced by the latter, the superintendent of schools of arts and crafts
Hermann Muthesius «encouraged the establishment of training workshops in
which students could learn by actually making things rather than designing
them on paper.» (1, p. 20) Whitford gives statistics: «In 1914 the Weimar
Kunstgewerbeschule was but one among eighty-one German institutions specializing
in art education in one form or another, and of these no fewer than sixty-three
included craft departments.» (1, p. 27)
The second goal of the school was to «create a new guild of craftsmen
without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman
and artist!» (2) The Belgian architect Henry van de Velde, who was a colleague
of Gropius at the Werkbund, conducted the private Arts and Crafts Seminar,
and it was «an institute to support the work of craft and industry, more
precisely a kind of laboratory where every craftsman or industrialist could
be given free advice, have his products analyzed and improved.» (3)
As we see, the Bauhaus proposals were not that unique as they probably
appear at first sight. It can be also said that rational design, to which
the «young masters» like Marcel Breuer contributed the most, reaching its
peak in the Georg Muche's experimental Haus am Horn, had been anticipated
by the Viennese Adolf Loos and the German Peter Behrens
(1). Both Behrens and van de Velde began as painters and
became architects later, because they — as artists of the Werkbund -- felt
obliged to be more socially engaged than it would have been possible in
painting. This point, essential for the Bauhaus, separates it from the
avant-garde.
In the 1919, the Weimar officials appointed Gropius to direct the new
Weimar art and craft school, resulting from the fusion of the Academy of
Art and the Kunstgewerbeschule. The new organization was called «The State
Bauhaus». It took Gropius several years to reform (as far as he was able
to) the school in the way he had described in his manifesto in the April
of 1919. He restructured the old-fashioned academic hierarchy of the Art
Academy: the old professorial teaching positions were now filled by «masters»
the former teachers as professors were replaced with «masters», and students
-- with «apprentices» and «journeymen». The Vorkurs and workshops
became the basics of education and remained in the program for all 14 years
of the Bauhaus existence surviving all Bauhaus metamorphoses. «A tandem
system of workshop-teaching» (1, p. 30) distinguished the Bauhaus from
other reformed arts and crafts schools in Germany.
The Weimar Bauhaus
The Weimar Bauhaus existed through 1925 until its first temporal closure
and subsequent re-establishment in Dessau. In this first phase different
currents in teaching can already be seen, that are directly influenced
by the personalities of the director Gropius and teachers of the preliminary
course, first Itten, then, since 1923, Moholy-Nagy. I don't believe this
was incidental but quite logical that Moholy came to take Itten's place,
because this reflected the development of the school. A closer look into
the Gropius' manifesto of 1919 reveals it as idealistic. It says: «The
artist is an exalted craftsman. In rare moments of inspiration, transcending
the consciousness of his will, the grace of heaven may cause his work to
blossom into art.» (2) Lyonel Feininger made the cover for this manifesto,
a woodcut reminiscent of the expressionism and demonstrating «the cathedral
of art», or, as Gropius wrote in an essay for the Arbeitsrat für Kunst
in 1919 «the creative conception of the cathedral of the future, which
will once more encompass everything in one form — architecture and sculpture
and painting». In this almost theologically conceptualized institution
artists, or «Masters of Form», were supposed to work hand in hand with
craftsmen, or «Workshop Masters». Whitford wrote: «From the beginning Gropius
was determined that the Bauhaus would become much more than a mere school.
He hoped that the students would learn to live and work together in a miniature
society which would serve as a model of society at large.» (1, p. 46) Whitford
compares this vision with the medieval guild (1, p. 49), and to me it also
seems a sort of a cloister in the service of transcendent art, occupied
by the Masters, the monks. Itten's spirituality, his fin-de-siecle image
of a «new man» and his teaching methods, including breathing exercises
and vegetarian diet for the students, contribute a lot to this metaphor.
The early Bauhaus suffered a number of problems and disillusionments.
The reality demonstrated that the co-operation between artists and craftsmen
was not altogether devoid of problems. Instead of the equality proclaimed
in the manifesto, the craftsmen were not treated as equals to the Masters
of Form: they were paid less, and it was the Masters of Form who could
make decisions in the workshops as well. In the manifesto Gropius wrote:
«The tuition fee is 180 marks per year (it will gradually disappear entirely
with increasing earning of the Bauhaus)» (2). But the earnings at that
time turned out to be an illusion — in 1921 he had to admit «the lack of
co-operation between the workshops, the lack of projects of any size which
would make the idea of the Bauhaus clear to the public, and the small number
of usable products made by some of the workshops.» (1, p.138) Of course,
the main reason for that was general lack of money in the post-war Germany,
but not only that. The manifesto begins with a obliging proclamation: «The
main aim of all visual arts is the complete building!» (2) But, as Oscar
Schlemmer said in 1921: «the construction and architecture class or workshop,
which should be the core of the Bauhaus, does not exist officially, but
only in Gropius' private office… It is an architectural bureau, its aims
directly opposed to the schooling function of the workshops.» (1, p. 78)
And the co-operative project of the Sommerfeld house also shows the «celebrated
craftsmanship in the old-fashioned way: there was nothing suggesting industrial
design anywhere in it.» (1, p. 77)
Gropius had to face all those imperfections and to undertake changes
for their improvement. He realized that instead of involvement with the
real world, the Bauhaus was getting isolated from it. The first step Gropius
made was the replacement of Johannes Itten with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Quite
opposite to the spiritually concerned Itten, Moholy was the «man mistrustful
of the emotions, more at home among machines than human beings» (1, p.
123) Under Moholy's guidance, the students of the Vorkurs now had
to create globe lamps, tea-pots, infusers etc. - much more utilitarian
things than those Itten had been interested in. The Bauhaus exhibition
in 1923, as well as the Muche's experimental Haus am Horn, show the changes
that had taken place inside the Bauhaus: the modern functional and rational
design superceded the beauty of the «exalted craftsmen» of the Sommerfeld
house.
Dessau
In 1925 the Weimar Bauhaus was closed due to the cancellation of financing.
The Bauhaus managed to find a new site, and with the amazing speed the
new campus was built. As soon as December, 1926, the school was reopened
in Dessau. This geographical shift stimulated a number of internal changes:
some workshops closed and some amalgamated; the printing workshop, previously
concentrating on graphic art, concerned now with layout, typography and
advertising, and the department of architecture was introduced. Gropius
wrote another statement, Principles of Bauhaus Production, different
from his first manifesto in many ways. Where the first manifesto proclaims
«the building!» the second one speaks about «present-day housing, from
the simplest household appliances to the finished dwelling». (4) Where
the first Programme calls upon a revision of the roles of artist
and craftsman, the Principles concern themselves with application
of new materials and technology, «a new productive unity in which they
[the crafts] will carry out the experimental work for industrial production».
(4) Whitford wrote that the Dessau Bauhaus became a place, where «a new
kind of industrial designer was being trained. The period of experimentation
was over. What went on was serious, practical and effective». The social
life of the school, now much more centralized on the campus, where the
staff and the students were living, became vivid and rich in events. The
teaching was made different from that in Weimar, with the involvement of
the «Young Masters» (Marcel Breuer, Herbert Bayer, Gunta Stölzl). Quite
conveniently, the former «Masters of Form» were now called «professors»,
and the employed trained craftsmen, who were no longer treated as equals
to professors, replaced the «Workshop Masters». The democracy of Weimar
gave place to the stricter subordination. The style of the production became
sober; for example, Marcel Breuer in his essay wrote: «Metal Furniture
is part of a modern world. It is styleless, for it should not express no
intentional form beyond its function […]» The Young Masters, whose influence
was essential to the atmosphere of the Dessau Bauhaus, «were much less
specialized, equally at home in the workshops and studio, […] and determined
to demonstrate that there is no essential difference between fine art and
the crafts». (1, p. 178)
Hannes Meyer
In 1927 Gropius assigned Hannes Meyer to lead the newly established
department of architecture. In 1926, the same year when Gropius published
his second manifesto, Meyer wrote his, The New World. His ideas
were mainly guided by the desire to develop a strongly functional dwelling,
without luxuries and at minimal expense. He seeks the maximal extent of
standardization (the Sozialer Wohnungsbau in the DDR and the Soviet
Union after the WW2 can, probably, serve as an example of a reification
of these ideas): «The degree of standardization is the index of our collective
economy». (6) With the production of «the typical standard wares of international
origin» he wants to construct «a residence machine». (6) Whitford wrote:
«Meyer fervently believed that it was the architect's job to improve society
[…]». (1, p. 180) In 1926-28, the architectural department under Meyer
built an experimental housing project in the Törten. Although the houses
were not perfect in the sense of durability, they were cheap and offered
poor families a possibility to obtain their own property.
Meyer's presence inspired a wave of resignations: Muche, Moholy, Breuer,
Bayer and even Gropius himself left the school. Meyer became the new director
and kept pursuing his goals of production design. Several workshops started
to draw profit at that time: for example, the mural-painting department
created a series of templates for a wallpaper factory. «Ironically, the
school under the Marxist Meyer benefited enormously from the success of
the capitalist system.» (1, p. 190)
Michael Nays in his article about Hannes Meyer wrote: «Meyer's work
seeks to fulfill the aesthetic, ideological, protopolitical mission to
recode the reified content of the objective, material world and to make
it available for simultaneous collective reception on a subjective, aesthetic
level.» (7, p. 146) But in 1930 Meyer was clearly not the right person
to lead an institution dependent on governmental funds — as soon as 1926
the Bauhaus was already considered too leftist. Meyer was forced to resign
by his colleagues and, deeply wounded, went to the Soviet Union to remain
there until 1936. The Bauhaus again needed a new director.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
When he was appointed to head the Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe had already
gained an international reputation. For the first time Gropius offered
him the director's chair in 1928, but he refused. Now he accepted it, and
the first thing he had to do was to re-establish the Bauhaus in its apolitical
form. Through this, many conflicts arose between him and the leftist students
who criticized him for being a «bourgeois architect», «preferring to design
luxurious houses for rich patrons than cheap accommodation for working
class». (1, p. 192) The students were now obliged to obey the rules, which
prohibited any kind of political activity.
Under Mies' directorship the dominant role of architecture increased:
«In 1930, the furniture, metal and mural-painting workshops were combined
into a single department for 'interior design'.» (1, p. 193) The fine art
courses were eliminated. The Bauhaus became much more theoretical, similar
to the convenient architectural school. Mies emphasized the meaning of
aesthetic representation in the architecture, and in his statement he said:
«What matters is not 'what' but only 'how,» and «the question of value
is decisive». (8) Compared to Meyer, Mies van der Rohe paid much less attention
(if any) to the sociological aspect of the houses he was planning, and
in comparison to Gropius, he was much less interested in challenging the
relationship of art and craft. He took the new opportunities matter-of-factly:
«The new era is a fact; it exists entirely independently of whether we
say 'yes' or ' no' to it. But it neither better nor worse than any other
era.» (8)
In 1933, when Hitler became a Chancellor, the school was closed for
being too cosmopolitan, or, from the point of view of Nazis, too «Jewish-Marxist».
The books cited:
- Whitford, Frank. Bauhaus. London: Thames and Hudson,
1984.
- Gropius, Walter. Programme of the Staatliches Bauhaus
in Weimar, 1919.
- Gropius, Walter. Concept and Development of the State
Bauhaus, 1924.
- Gropius, Walter. Principles of Bauhaus Production,
1926.
- Breuer, Marcel. «Metal Furniture and Modern Spatiality»,
in Das neue Frankfurt, no. 1, 1928.
- Meyer, Hannes. «The New World», in Die Neue Welt,
no. 7, 1926.
- Nays, Michael. The Bauhaus And The Radicalization
Of Building.
- Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig. The New Era, 1930.
1. The house that Behrens designed for
himself on the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt in 1901, is an example of the
Jugendstil, but its scarce ornamentation and large flat surfaces make it
a boundary case of the Art Nouveau, a step toward functional design of
the on-coming architectural style.